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In this paper, Professor Sutton's team attribute higher hospital
death rates at the weekend to the patients being sicker. Sutton is joining
very erudite company (Prof Hawking, Prof Winston and the BMA). This group
is rapidly becoming the 'climate change deniers' of healthcare. Not
including this study, there have been 50 very large studies (>100,000
patients) published so far in this area (supplied on request). 44 show...

In this paper, Professor Sutton's team attribute higher hospital
death rates at the weekend to the patients being sicker. Sutton is joining
very erudite company (Prof Hawking, Prof Winston and the BMA). This group
is rapidly becoming the 'climate change deniers' of healthcare. Not
including this study, there have been 50 very large studies (>100,000
patients) published so far in this area (supplied on request). 44 showed a
weekend effect. These studies used multivariate analysis (to take out
confounding variables, like sickness).

This effect has been shown in emergency and elective admissions, all
over the developed world. It is nothing to do with the UK. Even the degree
of increased risk (approximately 10%) is the same, in almost all of the
studies. It is even more strange that Sutton, in this paper, concluded
"Sunday daytime was .. associated with a higher mortality risk .. compared
with Wednesday daytime" (relative risk 6%) - but this was not emphasised.

In other words, whether you have an emergency admission, or a have a
planned operation, you have an approximately 10% greater chance of dying
if you are admitted at the weekend. Perhaps these Professors (and the
BMA) should read the literature before they continue to confuse the
public. I presume they would trust the NHS to look after their own health
(or that of their family) at the weekend.

Yours faithfully

Dr Andrew Stein
Consultant Physician

Conflict of Interest:

I was one of the authors of NHSE's 7DS 10 Clinical Standards in Dec 2013